Call Number:

C0052

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

58 boxes

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Caroline Gordon Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1926-1979 (bulk) and 1868-1995 (inclusive)

Creator:

Gordon, Caroline, 1895-1981

Form:

Fiction. and Photoprints.

Abstract:

Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) was an American author. This collection consists of manuscripts of Gordon's work, including novels, lectures, and poetry. It also includes correspondence with authors and family members, writings of others, and photographs.

Caroline Ferguson Gordon was an American teacher, literary critic and novelist. Born on October 6, 1895, she grew up on a farm in Kentucky. Gordon graduated from Bethany College in West Virginia, in 1916 and began her career working as a writer for the Chattanooga Reporter until 1924. In 1925 she married Allen Tate, a poet and literary critic associated with the Southern Agrarian literary movement. Together they pursued their careers in writing, forging close bonds with other writers such as Robert Lowell, Hart Crane, Flannery O'Connor and Katherine Anne Porter. In 1931, Caroline published her first novel, Penhally, and in 1934 released her most popular work Aleck Maury, Sportsman. "Old Red," her best known story, published in Scribner's Magazine, was awarded a second-place O. Henry Award in 1934. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932. Her relationship with Tate grew volatile, and they divorced, remarried, and finally divorced permanently in 1959. Caroline continued to move around the country throughout her life, living at various times in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and Washington state. In 1978 she moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, to be with her daughter and died there on April 11, 1981.

The papers consist of correspondence and manuscripts of most of Caroline Gordon's published works, as well as some unpublished manuscripts, dating mainly from the 1930s to the 1970s. There are typescripts, often with autograph corrections, for ten novels, two nonfiction works, an anthology, 28 short stories, approximately 21 lectures, 20 essays, a play, several poems, and a transcribed series of dreams. Notable works are The Glory of Hera, The Malefactors, None Shall Look Back and How to Read a Novel. Also included are documents, photographs, journals in which her stories and articles appeared, clippings, papers of other persons, containing manuscripts of Ashley Brown, Charles Hallett, Stark Young, and others, and correspondence of her daughter, Nancy Tate Wood.

General correspondence contains letters of such literary figures as Malcolm Cowley, Ford Madox Ford, Jacques Maritain, Flannery O'Conner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Allen Tate, also letters from the University of Dallas where Miss Gordon taught as writer in residence, editors, literary critics, other authors and friends. Family correspondence holds letters from the Gordons, Meriwethers and other family members dating from the 1860s to letters from her grandchildren in the 1970s. Among the additional materials (Series 8) is a significant number of letters from Gordon to various family members, such as her Aunt "Pidie," spanning six decades.

Organized into the following series: